Power to the Twitter people

Back when I was in high school I’d bought a camera at a local photo store. It constantly broke, yet they refused to give me a new one. Both me and the shop knew that I was by law entitled to one (as I had gone down there with a book of Norwegian law, and read them the relevant paragraphs), but it wasn’t until my mum went down and threatened to contact the local paper, or the Norwegian version of “Watchdog”, that they gave in.

Everyone involved knew that there was a very slim chance my broken camera-story was spicy enough to be picked up by any media we might contact, but I suppose they still didn’t want to risk it.

I fear the art of writing a strongly
worded letter is a dying skill.

Back in those days, before Facebook, Twitter and well, internet for most of us, newspapers, TV consumer shows, or the government consumer council were the only way to create a reputation crisis for a company that had treated us badly.

These days, it’s a brave new world for consumers, a world with a lot more consumer power.  Instead of taking time to write a strongly worded letter, or wait for an hour on the phone to get through to customer service, the internet will in many cases provide you with a much swifter reply.

If you have the slightest celebrity status, you can create a media frenzy in minutes!

About a year ago filmmaker Kevin Smith (creator of cult classics like Dogma, Clerks and Chasing Amy), got thrown off a Southwest Airline flight to Burbank, because he was apparently to overweight to fit in his seat. The airline’s guidelines for “customers of size” stated that if you can’t lower both armrests while seated, you have to book two seats. As it were, only one seat was available, and an enraged Smith had to leave the flight.

Furiously her tweeted a series of angry tweets about the incident, tagged the airline in them, and sent them out to his 1.6 million followers. The reaction was instant, and as the rant was retweeted around the world, Southwest Airlines was suddenly facing tide wave of complaints from people who sympathised with Smith, and thousands of newspaper articles potentially giving people a very negative view of the company.

Too fat? The verdict is inconclusive.

Southwest quickly realized they had a PR crisis on their hands, and after frantically trying to apologise via Twitter, Southwest was forced to issue a lengthy, public apology and a refund to the film director. They also explained their decision on their blog, in a careful attempt of self-defence.

This case wasn’t entirely a win for Smith and a loss for Southwest though, proving that you can’t always count on the people backing you up against companies.

As anyone who’s ever been on a flight next to a “person of size” can vouch for, it is quite annoying to have your own, already small, personal space crowded by someone else’s fat, and many people applauded Southwest on their guidelines, and told Smith to go on a diet.

Now, most of us do not have nearly 2 million followers on Twitter, nor would our predicament cause worldwide media attention, but stories like the Smith-incident have caused many companies to pay close attention to what is said about them on Twitter and Facebook, and firing off a complaint on social media can be wise.

Chicago Tribune tells the story of completely normal consumers who got their complaint dealt with instantly by tweeting. It’s a good way to get noticed.

Southwest Airlines now have two employees devoted to their Twitter page, and three people monitoring their Facebook fan page.

The advantage of online complaining is that your predicament is visible to everyone on the internet, and companies are aware of the possible crisis arising from angry consumers united. In a consumer world where reputation is key and crisis can be generated from the smallest incident, the power is continuing to grow for the consumer.

PR practitoners will ignore this trend at their own peril...

When war PR backfires

It’s hard drumming up support for war, especially a war as unpopular as the war in Afghanistan. The war effort is especially unpopular in Germany where a poll last year revealed that 70 per cent of Germans want their forces pulled out.

As a PR-tactic to increase support for a continued presence, the popular talk show host Johannes B. Kerner brought his entire crew down to Afghanistan to co-inside with a visit to the troops by defence minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg.

The plan was to interview the minister and the troops in an on-location talk show, a program that was expected to be watched by millions.

This seemingly fluffy plan backfired totally when it transpired how much the production had cost the German army, and thus the tax payer.

17.000 euros was the final price tag, and the already war weary Germans, were not amused.

The Ministry of Defense had been open about the talk show being a part of their PR effort to gain support among the people and in parliament, but instead it resulted in a plethora of negative articles of the extravagant spending.

Not exactly PR gold.

If you speak German, you can see the talk show here:

PR and journalism in the time of war – An uneasy relationship

War is by definition violent, bloody, ugly and gruesome. It’s a PR job to convince the people at home that it’s necessary.  

To do this job it is necessary to work with, and the PR practitioners find themselves in a bit of a catch-22. PR needs journalism to report stories that will make the people at home support the war, but by letting them have information and access to the front, they might lose control and end up with stories the world over damning the war.¨

The images of war

Pictures make the whole difference. They say a picture says more than a thousand words, and it is never truer than in wartime journalism.

There have been war reporting for as long as there has been journalism, but before the invention of the telegraph, the news was often not published until long after the events described, and contained few, if any, photographs.

With the new camera technology and moving images, the Second World War became the first war the people at home could SEE. But as cameras were still big and bulky, most of the images and footage was filmed by the army themselves, used in propaganda reports designed to boost morale at home. War journalists in those days mostly saw themselves as a part of the war effort, and happily kept in line with military policy.

As Hitler’s brutality spread across Europe, PR practitioners in Britain didn’t have a particularly difficult job getting across the message that the war was necessary.

In search of the truth

By the 1960s journalism had changed, and the wartime PR-business had failed to notice. Armed with SLRs and film cameras, independent journalists roamed free in Vietnam, reporting back on a war that was much harder to sell back home.

The journalists themselves were not playing ball anymore with the propaganda efforts. Showing the “true face of the war” was the new goal, and especially photojournalism became a nightmare for the American government.

Apart from maybe the Second World War, the Vietnam War is one of the most visually iconic wars in history. As striking photographs and film of Vietnamese suffering, and American brutality reached the American people, the protests and anti-war movement grew to astronomical hights.

This image, taken photographer by Nick Ut, of a little naked girl running away from a napalm attack won the Pulitzer Prize in 1972.  The girl’s story and new of the horrific burn damages to her back, was spread around the world. For the American administration it was a PR disaster.

Also on the home front was photojournalism a nuisance for the government. Millions of protesters make for striking visuals, and young girls putting flowers into guns is not something you forget easily

Blackout

American trust in war time journalism was none-existent after the war finally ended, and in the subsequent conflict, the invasion of Grenada in 1983, the US government decided that no journalists would be allowed in. “The Grenada Blackout” was seen by many as a direct result of the PR disaster that was the Vietnam war. The Reagan administration claimed that the Grenada invasion was a “special case” where media participation was not “appropriate”. (You can read more here)

This approach might work on the invasion of a small Caribbean island (an invasion that by the way had a lot of support in the US), but as the first Gulf War loomed, the PR machinery had to come up with a new strategy.

Strickt control

By 1991 we had mass media, including live coverage of the bombs raining over the enemy . The war was hailed as a “technological war” where the new weapons were so precise that there would be hardly any civilian loss of life

Still not wanting to lose control over what the media was reporting, they preferred keeping them in warehouses far away from the actual front, feeding them exactly the news they wanted to get out.

This strategy received a lot of criticism, and both the media and the people were suspicious that they were being kept in the dark, not allowed to know the “real truth”.

Embedded journalism

When the Bush-administration was gearing up for the war on Iraq, allegedly saving the world from Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction, yet another PR strategy was implemented: Embedded journalism.

The PR people promised journalists full access to the front line, and the freedom to see experience exactly what the soldiers experienced, many journalists felt this was finally a good way of cooperation between the military and the media. The embedded journalists were in addition to those who stayed at the media headquarter, very much in the same style as the 1991 gulf war, being fed carefully selected bits of information.

The very bravest went in to Iraq as independent reporters, without military back-up. And although they undoubtedly got other angles and stories the military would rather be without, the practice is extremely dangerous and many paid with their lives (several as a result of friendly fire), including ITVs Terry Lloyd.

A success?

War is an ethical minefield for PR practitioners. You are required to routinely lie, mislead, keep journalists in check and hide any facts that might swing the public opinion against the war effort.

In many ways embedding journalists have been a PR success. It is obvious that it is hard for journalists to report negative stories of the men they live, sleep and sometimes risk their lives with. They come back with spectacular action shots of war, and it’s often even harder to know what is really going one, while you’re in the middle of it.

Whether it is a brilliant deal for the free press, is another story.

Here's a short, but quite good little documentary on the history of war correspondents:

Will blog for good grades!

Hi!

My name is Linn Madsen, and I am currently doing a master degree in public relations at Westminster University in London. As part of our course we are to do this blog "to reflect on what you learned from the lecture and class exercises" in addition to add things we have read and found online.

Our lectures cover topics like spin, PR in wartime, PR and NGOs, social media etc.

I come from a background in journalism, something my blog will probably also show signs of. The only form of blogging I have done before, was an exercise blog as part of an experiment at my old newspaper. We were going to try to get in shape in four weeks with the help of a personal trainer, and if you can read Norwegian, you can read about my trials and tribulation here: http://www.side2.no/helse/article2892507.ece

But this kind of blog I have never done. So bear with me while if find out how to blog :) We started out blogging experience by doing a social media workshop, which you can find here:

Blogging and video workshop

View more presentations from Matt holland.

So welcome to my blog, and feel free to ask if there's anything you want to know!

Linn